A Blog for Motorcycle Enthusiasts Since 2008

Today I rode my motorcycle for about 200 miles, noticed one side of my motorcycle was covered in oil halfway through the ride and finished the day by digesting a fair amount of motor oil!

This was the first weekend that I can remember in long time where I had a full weekend open for riding. It was a fantastic day, no rain, no clouds but a little gusty. I picked up an old project and planned a ride route that would take me up and over Philly from Delaware without any Interstates. Diana and I had a good time riding but the route wasn’t my favorite after we got north of West Chester, PA. It was slow going and I pulled into an Exxon station to discuss turning around so that we could be home by a decent hour. Diana wanted to continue on to our destination of Frenchtown, NJ before turning around. I agreed and started to gear up.

As I got ready to ride I started noticing oil on the left side of my Harley. First on the primary case, then on my air horn and then on the front and underside of the gas tank. I saw some pooling at the end of a fuel line and thought for a moment it was gasoline! Diana took a finger swipe of it and said it didn’t smell like gas. It was oil. It was all over my engine guard. I was starting to wonder if I was behind a truck with a leak that was spraying me; but that was unlikely. Then I saw it, the left leg of the fork was all covered in oil. A blown fork seal was the culprit!

I wrapped a white bandana around the fork to soak up the oil so it wouldn’t drip down the fork leg to the front disk brake. Then we turned around and headed for home. Shortly after, I became concerned the bandana wasn’t catching all the oil. We stopped at a Wawa parking lot. I took a few sheets of my directions that were printed on copy paper and formed a paper tube around the fork slider and used a strap to tie it in place. Amazingly this actually contained most of the oil for the remainder of the ride home.

When we got back to Newark, DE we stopped at Woodside Farm Creamery for ice cream. All good rides end with ice cream or beer! When looking through the flavors there was one that jumped out at me and was the clear choice for the day: Motor Oil!

Two scoops of Motor Oil in a sugar cone was definitely sweet and I licked up every last bit of it. But I’m bummed about not being able to ride tomorrow. Sweet sorrow.